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★★★★☆ “Loss is fast, grief is slow…At the Grief Hotel, time can be stopped.”
Playwright Lisa Birkenmeyer doesn't exactly make it easy to get the gist of her quirky plays right away, but… Grief Hotel. It begins with Aunt Bobby (Susan Blommert, queen of deadpan delivery) sitting in an armchair to the left of the stage. Updated the layout after the show's fleeting premiere at the cramped Wild Projects last summer, design collective Dot has sliced the Public's smallest stage into a sharp, shallow wedge, with a pace deftly directed by Tara Ahmadinejad. This is a fast one-act play. It felt like it was spreading and hitting my face.
Bobby launches into his latest brainstorming pitch, pointing to an imaginary screen where the stage curtain would normally be. It's a luxury hotel for young people facing deep loss. Who exactly is she talking to (other than us)? She will have to wait for it. She is apparently participating in some kind of consumer panel (an “idea session”) for her chain of major hospitality companies. Determined to seize this moment from her, Bobbie rattles off her recommendations at breakneck speed. She's savvy enough to weed out some of the buzzwords (e.g. “bespoke”) and check out all the health techniques she thinks will help, from crystals to karaoke. (Wait for it.)
Sartheesh Wynn (Ana Nogueira) is ostensibly partnered with the slightly younger Teresa (Susanna Perkins). Teresa, who is down-to-earth and unperturbed, emphasizes that she hates games, but she proves that she is a tiger on the show.
[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★★★★ review here.]
Wynn, who identifies as gay, begins an online affair with a middle-aged man (Bruce McKenzie) who has seemingly standard issues. He's fossilized enough to interject random smiles into his texts. On the surface, Wynn's decision to go to the show, to physically cheat, doesn't make sense. But she and her friends are still reeling from the traumatic events they witnessed during her high school days.
Win's former best friend Em (a physically strong Nadine Malouf) is roped into this twisted network. He is frustrated and bored by his disappointing partnership with the eternally kind Rohit (Naren Weiss). Overall, Em much prefers the company of “an AI bot called Melba.”
Yet another classmate went unseen and unreachable, causing mild consternation among the group.
All the vectors gradually merge, and while you're busy figuring it out, you can watch a very talented octet repel each other in surprising ways. For example, is he a middle-aged online rosary? He turns out to be a true romantic. Wynn, for some reason, gets the full-throated adoration she craves.
As a mentor and aspiring healer, Aunt Bobby does her best to soothe and guide the young people she has come to love in the right direction, but she does so dryly and kindly, with no hint of sweetness.
Birkenmeyer contributed to the creation of Gilles Sobule's moving and cheerful solo exhibition. fuck 7th School yearcaptures all the chaos and confusion of the quarter-life crisis, that awkward developmental stage in which emerging adults feel like caterpillars and lost.
Aunt Bobby adds a coda to the Grief Hotel story. “Maybe she should change that girlfriend's name,” she advises her presumed audience. “Because that doesn't sound very fun.” On the contrary, the play that quotes and encapsulates her concept is just that.
Grief Hotel opens at the Public Theater on March 27, 2024 and runs through April 27. Tickets and information: publictheater.org
